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Professional Development

"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor." – Henry David Thoreau

You are Cornell’s future. Cornell offers many opportunities for you and your colleagues to continuously grow and develop your skills, increasing your own as well as your team’s, department’s, college’s, division’s, and Cornell’s ability to deliver excellence. Our goal is that every Cornell employee will demonstrate excellence in leadership and management, because Cornell excels because of you, the leaders of Cornell.

To continuously build awareness, knowledge, skills, and on-going growth, Cornell offers orientation, leadership development, and skill-based programs for new employees, front-line staff, project managers, managers, supervisors, faculty, and department chairs. Our goal is to offer quality programs that will further enhance your skill set and ability to collaborate and partner with others to lead Cornell into the future.

The leadership development curriculum is designed to further develop the skills of current supervisors and managers in: increasing self-awareness about leadership style, improving communication and relationship building skills, leading project teams, practicing a methodology for leading groups, and building campus-wide networks.

The administrative curriculum is designed to help individual contributors increase their skill in: maintaining effectiveness when experiencing change, developing their ability to work well with others, to collaborate and be good team players, effectively communicating to other departments and all levels of the organization, being proactive and taking prompt action to accomplish objectives and achieve goals, and establishing courses of action for self and others to ensure that work is completed efficiently.

The management curriculum is designed to help managers, supervisors and project and team leads in: managing effective business operations, developing operational procedures, estimating human resource needs, managing conflict, initiating new activities in support of goals, promoting change, and serving as a liaison with other departments.

Online Tools and Courses

CU Learn: CU Learn is a web-based learning tool for the Cornell workforce and students that provides access to a variety of training programs across campus and allows users to track their progress across different types of training activities. Courses include Environmental Health and Safety and Kuali trainings among others.

Books 24/7: Books24x7 is an online book resource from SkillSoft that offers complete unabridged contents of thousands of the latest and best business and technology books.

Lynda.com: Lynda.com is an online tool available to all faculty, students and staff with an active Net ID. It offers 2,500 detailed courses with over 80,000 high-quality instructional videos on the latest software, creative, and business skills for people at all experience levels.

Cornell Outdoor Education (COE): offers a variety of courses, including climbing, backpacking, canoeing, caving, kayaking, biking, skiing, wilderness first aid, teambuilding and outdoor leadership. All classes are open to the public.

ILR Executive Education: offers programs designed to advance the HR function and by focusing on the critical intersection of business strategy and human capital to solve challenging organizational issues, and drive business performance.

Building a Culture of Respect: Cornell is making a concerted effort to ensure that our community can identify potential acts of prohibited harassment and discrimination and know who to contact and consult about it. Our aim is to make sure campus remains a safe and respectful academic and workplace environment focused on education. To help achieve that aim, Cornell has developed a valuable brief online course, Building a Culture of Respect.

School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions: offers staff, faculty, and their families a variety of year-round opportunities for personal and professional growth, including Extramural Study (Part-time Study), Executive Education programs, Summer and Winter session, English for International Students and Scholars, Cornell’s Adult University, Cyber Tower, Summer Events Series, and the Summer College Program for High School Students.

Sponsored Project Services: provides education and training programs in the area of sponsored research administration along with individual and group training upon request.

Tompkins Cortland Community College: Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3) offers credit courses and noncredit workshops designed to help Cornell staff members become proficient in their core competencies. Cornell staff may be eligible for Tuition Aid. For general or registration information about non-credit courses, visit TC3.biz.